Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Australian Government announced on 7 April 2009 it would establish a new company to build and operate a new high-speed National Broadband Network (NBN). The NBN will become the single largest infrastructure investment made by an Australian Government, accompanied by historic reforms to Australia's telecommunications sector (see "New National Broadband Network" - here)

In order to cover the whole continent, some of the broadband infrastructure will be based on satellite connectivity. NBN announced that "Optus and Ipstar as interim satellite service providers in regional Australia as part of the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout. The contracts with Optus and IPStar are worth $200 million and $100 million, respectively" (see "NBN Co signs Optus and IPStar for $300m interim satellite service deal" - here).

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Gilat VSAT

Gilat Satellite Networks announced that " ..it has been selected by Optus Networks Pty Limited to provide a SkyEdge II Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) network, installation, operation and maintenance for the Australian Government's National Broadband Network Company's (NBN Co) Interim Satellite Service ... The agreement with Optus provides for an initial network of 11 SkyEdge II hubs and 20,000 SkyEdge II VSATs expected to be deployed within up to three years. The agreement stipulates a possible expansion of the network to include hubs and up to 48,000 VSATs ..The agreement represents a potential value of up to $120 million, subject to final design and implementation of the fully expanded network".

See "Gilat to Provide Turnkey VSAT Network and Operations to Optus for NBN Co’s Interim Satellite Service in Australia" - here. Gilat revenues for 2010 were $233M.

Satellite communication was always a clear candidate for DPI based traffic management. Due to the nature of the service physics and the cost and availability of bandwidth, smart, application aware, fairness policies are required for proper QoE. See for example Allot's solution (here) - Optus is an Allot customer (here).